The SAE Mud Bowl is Saturday, my sources (HT: GV) tell me the home team will face FIJI in the annual slopfest. I’m still unclear if two teams of ladies will entertain during halftime.

Game time is around 9am and I’ve got the early line at FIJI –6. The visitors feature quarterback Ben Fry, a standout in high school at Grosse Pointe South who was also on the U-M varsity roster last year. While success on a regular field doesn’t always translate to the mud, I understand Fry is quite a weapon. We’ll see.

Saturday’s edition of This Week in Michigan Football History drops back to 2001 to look at the battle between Lloyd Carr’s 12th ranked Wolverines and Joe Tiller and his 17th ranked Purdue Boilermakers.

But before stepping into that, we look at Michigan’s Homecoming tradition, dating back to 1897 and of course one of the greatest traditions on the U-M campus: The SAE Mud Bowl.

With the kick-off of the Illinois game set for noon, the SAE Mudbowl will start around 9:45am at the corner of South University and Washtenaw.

The host fraternity will face Phi Psi who defeated Alpha Epsilon Pi in fraternity league playoffs last night. The sororities are also set, as Kappa Kappa Gamma will face off against Sigma Kappa (photo inset above).

The event will benefit Mott Children’s Hospital and I understand over $30,000 has already been raised.

They typically play this on Homecoming but due to a student break that coincided with that weekend, the game was moved out to November 6, 2010.